Howard Rosenberg
Farm labor has made plenty of news lately, but most of the stories are not sweet and the pictures not pretty. Local as well as national media have led an upsurge of public attention to agricultural workers in poverty, insecurity, ill health, and squalid living conditions. Since Labor Day I have personally come across reports on the plight of the farm worker on CBS Evening News, ABC World News Tonight, Fresno Bee, Los Angeles Times, Monterey Herald, El Mundo, La Opinion, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Jose Mercury News.
The litany of unmet needs of farm workers is by now regrettably familiar. Public and private testimony has presented evidence of inadequate housing, health care, education and child care, and acculturation assistance (e.g., consumer information, translation services, language classes), as well as lousy employment conditions. Workers, their chosen representatives, and service agency staff are not the only people urging that these needs be addressed.
A vegetable grower-shipper to whom I had not spoken for at least five years got back in touch last month after reading an article about farm labor in his local paper. Seeing described in print what he had been observing first-hand had made his rising disquiet spill over into a phone call, "just to talk" about how badly he felt for the people on whose skills and efforts our bounteous agriculture depends. While his own terms of employment for field workers are better than the local industry norm, he had no question about the general accuracy of the report, only about what in the world could be done to change things.
Like many of the published analyses, this grower related tough times for workers to a trinity of labor market forces: (1) uncontrolled entry of new immigrants into the market, (2) expanded use of and competition among farm labor contractors, and (3) decline of union membership and effectiveness. To those three should probably be added both product market competition and the increasing legal obligations and liabilities attached to employment as an institution. Opinions differ on which of these are chicken, egg, and rooster, but there is consensus among observers of the farm labor scene that somehow they all fit together.
Widespread recognition that workers are hurting is not matched by general agreement on what or who is responsible for this state of affairs. Some critics point first at farm owners and operators. Terms of employment on the farm are clearly an important, though by no means the sole, determinant of worker incomes and life-styles, but growers cannot set those terms independent of other business factors. Many farm employers who would like their workers to have higher wages, more benefits, and steadier jobs find it infeasible to provide them.
"I know how much my guys have to pay for their kids' shoes and frankly don't see how they can meet basic family needs on the pay they get," said a Central Valley vineyard manager the other day. "But many are already at the top of our range, which is high for the area, and there's no way I can afford to raise it with grape prices being what they are. And don't get me started about all the government paperwork we have that only adds to our costs."
Given that employers in agriculture, as in other industries, are not able to provide fully for the needs of their employees, to say nothing of the unemployed, difficult issues of public policy must be faced. How should the responsibilities of delivering and paying for services needed to sustain the farm workforce be distributed? With our social service infrastructure bursting at the seams, who among all agricultural workers and other people in need should have highest priorities for help? How much of the bill for it should the public treasury, employers, and workers themselves have to shoulder? Where and on what basis do we draw the line between private and public responsibility?
Don't hold your breath waiting for a straight answer from me on any of these. Whatever our body politic does with them, however, you can bet the ranch that efforts to improve worker welfare will bear consequences for management decisions by farmers, and vice versa. The less rewarding or more troubling the outcomes of farm employment for workers, the more likely will there be moves to further regulate it.
Surely there is more latitude to accommodate worker needs and preferences in farm businesses that are not struggling to retain a slim margin between revenues and ever-escalating costs. But in every organization there is potential for improving both profitability and terms of employment - if not enough to make everybody happy, at least to improve things a bit. Many California farms currently utilize labor management practices that are worth emulating for how they cut down on simple misunderstandings, ill will, avoidable errors, and waste.
Some of these practices were devised purely from on-farm inspiration, trial, error, and refinement, but most came about through judicious use or adoption of an idea picked up from elsewhere. The application and benefits of such ideas would be more widely shared if we had more careful analysis of the labor management variations within agriculture. Until the wave of worker studies sparked by the 1986 immigration reform law, it was often lamented that we knew little about the farm workforce. Well, we knew then and continue to know even less about how it is managed.
A framework in Labor Management Decisions last Spring presented personnel management decisions (about, for example, job design, recruitment and selection, supervision, pay and benefits) as affected by various influences (e.g., technology, labor market, laws, attitudes) and in turn affecting personnel outcomes (e.g., motivation, absenteeism, turnover, accidents, ideas) that translate into business results (e.g., production, earnings). This scheme suggests four types of research on labor management practices.
1. The first type of study is simple description of the policies and practices used within a population of farmers (thus focusing narrowly on the second column in the framework). This research answers such questions as: "In what ways do San Joaquin Valley dairy owners go about recruiting, determining wages, or training their herdsmen, milkers, and calf feeders?" "On what basis do coastal strawberry growers decide whom to lay off as plant yield wanes at the end of a season?" "How much do field crop farmers pay to mechanics, machine operators, and irrigators in Sacramento Valley orchards?"
2. The second type of study, examining links between the second and either third or fourth columns, is assessment of relationships between respective management practices and personnel outcomes or business results. Examples of the questions addressed are: "How does provision of family health insurance affect turnover, fraudulent workers' compensation claims, and overall cost of production in southern California nurseries?" "How does shifting from hourly to piece rate or instituting regular performance reviews affect employee earnings and quality of pruning in a Napa vineyard?" "Does an end-of-season bonus help keep onion workers in Imperial from leaving early for employment in Coachella grapes?"
3. A third type considers effects of the constraints and influences (first column of the chart). Viewing personnel management as somewhat dependent on these factors, studies of relationships between the first and second columns may be intended to find out: "What happens to wages in fresh market tomato production when tariff barriers come down?" "When immigration increases, do labor contractors change the way they supervise melon harvesting crews?" "How is the need for worker layoff and recall affected by scheduling walnut tree pruning for the fall rather than winter?" "Are extra recruitment efforts needed to reassemble crews of experienced citrus pickers the year after a freeze drastically curtails production (and employment)?"
4. Studies of a fourth type, perhaps a hybrid of #2 and #3, investigate how contextual factors (first column) moderate the relationship between management practices (second column) and outcomes (two rightmost columns). "Do investments in employee training pay off better in accident avoidance under a relatively capital-intensive or labor-intensive production technology?" "Does a profit-sharing bonus plan affect productivity of migrant workers as much as of local residents?" "Does higher pay result in less voluntary turnover by workers regardless of the general unemployment rate in the economy?"
Empirical findings from any of these four types can prove useful in both (1) reducing reliance on broad-brush generalizations in portrayals of farm employment, and (2) bringing good ideas to the attention of farm managers who can put them into practice.
The APMP is about to issue its annual solicitation of proposals for support of projects that could contribute to improvement of labor management in agriculture. Projects previously funded that are still under way are listed in the accompanying box. Since several disciplinary perspectives are relevant to farm management decisions, our program has and will continue to fund research and education of various sorts and conducted in various quarters.
We look forward especially to new projects that feature innovative management practices and their effects on such outcomes as unit labor cost, overall production cost and quality, turnover, worker earnings, employment duration, health and safety, and need for public services.
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